Guide: How to help your kids nail NAPLAN

From using certain words to the way they read comprehension, there are techniques which help students boost their marks in next week’s NAPLAN tests.

Students have had the most disrupted two years of schooling in recent history due to the Covid pandemic — and with upcoming NAPLAN tests probing their learning over the past two years across reading, writing and arithmetic, many parents are worried their results won’t be up to scratch.

Here, top experts reveal the best way to make sure a child’s test performance reflects their true ability.

Year 3

The first time children sit NAPLAN in Year 3 ins normally stressful but this year when students put pen to paper it could be more so.

They will get 45 minutes for reading, 45 minutes for spelling and grammar and punctuation, 40 for writing, 45 minutes for numeracy.

The writing test is only paper-based in Year 3, while in other years children sit it on a computer.

Cluey Learning’s Dr Selina Samuels said parents could help their children be at their best by helping prepare them for the test itself.

“The first thing is that it’s probably good for them to get some practice in working out how to approach multiple choice questions,” she said.

Mum Lauren Hill with her children, Tyla 12, Nic, 7, and Josh, 9. She said she wanted her kids to know how to use a computer.

She said that meant schooling them on how to reduce the number of options down to the two most likely if they couldn’t readily see the correct answer.

When it came to numeracy, she said it could help by doing some practice questions and completing them within a time limit so they got used to moving at a pace.

Example maths questions include ones like “Clark had 24 dinosaurs in his dinosaur collection. A week later, he had 47 dinosaurs. How many dinosaurs did Clark collect during the week?”.

Dr Samuels said for some questions, the maths might be simple but some children may struggle with how to unpack it.

“Some of the questions get increasingly trickier than we expect. But also, even for the young students, it may be the wording of the questions which stumps them. So, learning how to unpack a question is just as important,” she said.

One of the most important things she said you could teach children not to do was panic — especially for the writing section for which they only had 40 minutes.

“It can be useful just to remind them to do things like beginning a sentence with a capital letter, having a full stop at the end of the sentence and knowing what paragraphing looks like,” she said.

“Get them to practise writing small pieces. So again, they know exactly what to do when they sit down and they tackle the question.

“We don’t want kids to spend so much time sort of panicking at the beginning so that they don’t get to show what they know.”

Children should go into the test feeling calm and not stressed.

Year 5

When it comes to the reading section of the test, they should read through the story or non-fiction text completely because it is not simply about just locating facts, but also being able to draw inferences.

Westmead-based Brilliant Academy director Subrat Nargundkar said students should read through comprehension texts to make sure they understand what was happening.

“When you are in Year 5, Year 7 and Year 9, what becomes more difficult is you don’t just have to identify facts but also read between the lines,” Mr Nargundka said.

He said it was also important to make sure they were confident with typing as well when it cames to the writing section.

Once children have the basics nailed down like capitals and full stops, children in Year 5 are expected to step up a bit in terms of sophistication by using techniques like a simile if it was a narrative task.

The actual 10 areas on the marking criteria are audience, text structure, ideas, character/setting, vocabulary, cohesion, paragraphing, sentence structure, punctuation, spelling.

Children are marked on how well they consider the reader, attempts to engage, how compelling the ending of a story is and how well they develop their characters.

Based on previous marking feedback, they should be able to pick up marks by having paragraphs (children who don’t use paragraphs have gotten zero marks in previous years).

Other things they can do is have complex sentences rather than just simple ones like “Hannah said this box is magic!”.

Additionally, children also get extra marks for correct spelling.

They should really know how to spell very pedestrian words correctly like “morning, heard and stopped”.

The best way to get around this is to simply use a different word which is still appropriate if the child is not sure.

Students who don’t relate the writing prompt to the set idea in the test could get zero marks for their ideas.

Year 7

By Year 7 students will be expected to be able to perform basic addition and subtraction with and without a calculator.

According to the NAPLAN website, they should also be able to “round seven-digit numbers to the nearest thousand, solve simple rate problems involving time and distance, elect an appropriate approximation to a calculation involving money and interpret and solve practical problems involving division, with access to a calculator.”

Cluey Learning’s Dr Selina Samuels said it was difficult to suddenly acquire good numeracy skills and if parents were seriously worried they should seek out tutoring.

“It’s looking at numbers and the ability to manipulate numbers and understand relationships between numbers and looking. And this is because the components of the tests are the same in seven and nine,” Dr Samuels said.

When it comes to writing in Year 7, they will get a different writing prompt than that given to primary school aged children.

Marking feedback states that children should not copy someone else’s story verbatim — but surprisingly it is perfectly acceptable to have a derivative text.

“If a marker recognises the source of a text, the student’s work must be marked on its merits as an original script. It is unlikely that a marker will always recognise the content of derivative texts but, even if a source is recognised, the student’s work must be marked on it merits as an original text,” previously released marking guidelines state.

In other words, feel free to copy but just not word for word.

But you must make the text related to the prompt — students who fail to do this get zero marks for ideas.

The Year 7 reading section still has multiple choice and students should still use strategic techniques if they’re not sure of the answer.

An example given asks students to read a newspaper article and then answer the following question: “Who is the most likely intended audience for this text? Scientists studying animal behaviour, residents of a local community, representatives from a local council, members of animal welfare groups.”

Certain words are considered challenging.

Year 9

In the reading section, inferences questions come to the fore. That means students would have to read a section of text and then answer questions like this: Which of these statements would the writer of this text agree with?

English Teachers Association president Eva Gold said there were not really any quick fixes when it came to grammar and punctuation.

“Students should read widely — read almost anything, but read widely,” she said.

“The thing is these grammatical constructions work in the context of a text that you’re reading and if you read widely you get a feeling for them.

“The more they read as part of their day to day life, the more likely students are going to have an instinctive sense of what is correct.”

She said when it came to the reading section, students in Year 9 should read the questions first, then read the passage, then answer the questions so they were hyper aware of what they were reading.

“In an exam — you read the questions first so that you get a sense of the context. Then you read the passage through and then you begin to answer the questions,” she said.

“And what this reinforces is the idea that context is the most important thing of all, you have a sense of the purpose.”

For the writing section, previous marking guidelines have said students could insert some words which are fairly commonplace but are considered to be “challenging” by NAPLAN markers.

These include words like necessary, manageable and possess. You get extra marks for using them and even more marks if you spell them correctly.

Ms Gold said one of the most important things was to keep in mind the purpose and the audience for the writing section.

“It is good old aristotle’s rhetorical triangle — all writing is who is speaking, who they’re speaking to and what they are speaking for. If you get those things right, that is just as important as content,” she said.

Dymocks Tutoring managing director Mark Buckland said when students and parents should remember that NAPLAN was really assessing the previous two years of coursework — which meant what they had learnt in Year 7 and Year 8 mathematics so should focus on that.

“It is probably too late to try and cram — and it is not wise,” he said.

If they were not doing well in Year 9 NAPLAN he said it would be best to regroup and try to figure out a plan to get them back on track.

“Get the results and see where your child is at, then decide what you want them to do.

“Year 9 is a weaker year for tutoring — there is a level of disinterest but by Year 10 they switch on because they realise they’re at the end of years of schooling.”

Lauren Hill think NAPLAN is good practice in sitting a test.

North Balgowlah Mum Lauren Hill said her children Nic, 7, Josh, 9, and Tyla, 12, had sat NAPLAN and she thought it was a good opportunity to practice sitting a test.

“I think it is a good point in time measure as to where your kids are at, they might be able to talk to the teacher about how they’re tracking,” she said.

She said she wanted to make sure the kids knew how to type reasonably well prior to sitting the test.

“I just want to make sure they’re able to use the keyboard so they don’t waste time working out where certain keys are rather than just getting on and doing it,” she said.

“I think it is good for kids to learn how to channel their energy and nerves.”